--->The Official Studio XPS 1340 Owner's Thread<---

Good to confirm that Win 7 also has Mystery Spikes, if nothing else.

 

3DMark 2005 (score = 5721)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHzfYOWTdk4

3DMark 2006 (score = 3489)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enapV_YafC4

 

But it's not OS related. It's hardware most likely.

 

Nice, thank you! This confirms that it's not just an isolated issue, but most likely the whole series is like that.

 

Well yeah, but at least we know for sure it's not Vista. Although Win 7 is pretty Vista-based anyway. I'm gonna mess around a bit but I dunno what else it could be.

 

My intuition tells me that its the nvidia chipset, just a guess, but, thats what I think the most likely cause would be...

 

Here I took it on m1330 with a Dell wireless card (enabled), running Windows XP SP3.

 

I'll go out on a limb and make a guess its the WiFi driver. Try disabling the WiFi driver in the Device Manager while the DPC Latency Checker is running and it just might calm down.

Tom

 

Just checked, no joy.

I killed all network adapters, including bt, still - same spikes


I'm curious, is this DPC latency checker a well known benchmark program?

I've never even heard of it...the reason I ask, is....frankly, if there is system lag, I sure as heck can't notice it doing basic task - tomorrow I'll try some audio/video encodes, etc, we'll see....

 

I just got my lappy from bestbuy.

It is not nerfed! as far as I can tell, everything is how it should be, keys are backlit and what not. its a really sexy lappy, thats for sure and it hasnt gotten too hot yet....i actually love the keyboard Ill do a more robust review later on!

 

It's only in audio/video recording/streaming, otherwise the system is fine.

 

Yes the latency checker is very well known in the audio recording industry. Anything with red spikes is too laggy for real time audio recording as you get stutters/drop outs in your recorded samples. The same applies to real time audio mixing. It's something DJs and musicians care about but most normal users won't be affected even if the bars get to 5000 latency. Audio will stutter very rarely in that case and only when your machine gets overloaded doing something else. Once it starts getting to 10000 latency though the audio glitches will become quite noticeable. Even the windows startup sound will stutter and crack with a lot of latency.

The 1340 and the 1640 seem to have the same latency spike every 4 seconds that the Dell Studio 15 series has. See this thread here for pictures:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=341893

For comparison this is what the Macbook Pro looks like in terms of latency when running Windows 7. You can see why a lot of people choose this machine for audio work:

 

Nice! and congrat's on receiving your new lappy!
So far it sounds like it's working out for you!!!
The keyboard is supposed to be really nice!

Yes, review and (pic's), if you dont' mind!


Cin

 

Before I head to bed, I just wanted to add that, the BB version, although stated that there was no Bluetooth included, there actually is. That was quite a nice surprise for me actually !!!

One more thing though, I wanted to remove the bloatware, but the lappy didnt come with media direct 3.3, where can I get this?

 

I dont think the studio xps 13 or 16 come with media direct

 

Yes! It has arrived!! Won't be getting much work done today

 

Well I will do some amature recording, lets see how that plays out...
Is there a difference with the DPC spikes according to the power level? (Balanced/Energy Saving/Maximum)
I think the eSata guess might be a good one...Once again a BIOS-Update could help! Anyone called Dell yet and asked them about the spikes?

[edit]
On my M1330 the spikes stop when I plug in the AC

Would be nice if someone just plugged his/her mp3 player in the line in and records a little bit to tell us if it is possible

 

Hurray! I finally got mine today, I am at work, so I am not able to play with, but I just booted and everything worked fine. Have not done any win updates yet, so we'll see if i get a BSOD.

But the first impression is that the build quality and looks are great. It feels very solid.
And yes, i'll do the latency test later.. I first need to figure out if i start tweaking the OS as it is or if i reinstall everything.

 

Finally received my SXPS13 yesterday!

Studio XPS 1340; 13" LED, C2D T8400, GeForce Go9500, 320 GB 7200RPM HDD, 4 GB memory, Wlan and BT.

Upon first boot it told me that the computer didn't start successfully last time and did I want to go into safe mode - not a brilliant first impression. However I did a wipe of the drive, re-installed Vista on my own terms and so far so good! No crashes after Windows update.

All drivers have installed fine. Need to go back and install the touch driver so I can get the multi-touch working though.

Heat is only an issue when running in 9500 mode but I'm only going to do that when gaming and therefore at a desk where it doesn't matter so much. In 9400 mode the heat is tolerable.

The build quality is top notch and I don't seem to have any problems with they keys being wonky. I love the backlit keyboard and the backlit mouse buttons are a stroke of genius.

As far as performance goes I've not had time to do anything substantial with it yet but compared to my previous laptop and desktop running Vista this thing is FAST! Windows spring open immediately and UAC prompts appear almost instantaneously.

All-in-all I'm quite impressed with it. Sure there are a few niggles but I don't think it's nothing that can't be solved with a few driver/BIOS updates from Dell.

On a final note I've noticed on the UK website at least there is a graphics driver revision A03 however it seems to be corrupt as it won't extract once I've downloaded it. I've tried it on 2 different computers both at home and work. Anyone else seen this?

 

After 3.5 days of consistent use, and leaving it on a lot, I have yet to have a lockup. But, as I think you said earlier, one of the first things I did was remove Mcaffee and instead opted for AVAST!.

I'm also not using it in SLI mode very much as I find that I don't really need it. Maybe I'll enable for heavy Phoptoshop CS4 sessions.

 

You can get rid of the recovery partition. However, after I got my machine setup the way I like and stable with all the Windows updates, I made a new recovery image with Acronis. In a few weeks, if the machien proves stable, I'll probably move the recovery image elsewhere and using Acronis Disk Director, merge the partition in with my main one.

For the record, I didn't do a clean install. I only removed 4 items that I found objectionable.

 

DPC Latency Checker is fairly new to me also and I agree that if the system doesn't seem to lag, it probably doesn't have a lot of real-world consequence. BUT, if it is causing even little Deferred Procedure Calls, correcting that can speed up an otherwise fast system even more.

I don't mean to belabor the point but did you disable the devices in Device Manager or use the switch (I'm guessing the 1340 has some type of switch like the M1330, either a hardware switch or a software "switch")? The reason I ask is because on my M1330 I had a spike every 10 seconds and turning off WiFi & BT with the hard switch didn't seem to make a difference. But when I disabled the drivers through the OS, disabling the 4965AGN stopped the spikes. I then tried EVERY possible setting for the device but nothing stopped the spikes.

And like you, it doesn't really matter because Windows 7 is just so darn fast on my M1330 that I doubt if I'll even try other/older WiFi drivers. With sub-50 second reboot times, I am nothing less than astonished with W7! I have some really tricked-out XP Pro installs that can't touch it overall.

Cheers and good luck with the 1340!
Tom

 

That's great. If I did it all over again, I'd not get the discrete graphics option anyway. And I image the CCFL screen isn't to shabby, either. Though, the local Best Buys don't have them in the store yet, although the person I spoke with said they're in the local warehouse...so any day now.

 

Kennaay,

Great news on the BB Dell 1340. I am very pleased to hear about the backlit keyboard and bluetooth (both are not mentioned on BB's spec sheet). It looks like the only feature they dropped was the LED screen. I am looking forward to seeing some pictures and a review. BTW, did you do a clean install of Vista?

As far as the DPC Latency issue goes, tonight I'll record some samples using the line in as well as the Presonus firewire interface that I have. I'll post some of them here if I have time. Does that DPC Latency checker look at the sound card? Could that be the problem? I wonder if an external interface (firewire, USB, etc..) would make a difference.

 

If you delete the Recovery partition, as long as you save just the one (large) file on the D:\RECOVERY partition (Factory.wim) as well as the small D:\TOOLS folder, you could always get the system back exactly the way it was shipped. May not be able to do it from the automated Recovery Environment, but you could do it from the installation disk recovery environment or a live OS like BartPE. Probably everyone knows that but if not, it would be a shame to lose the possibility of easily "starting from scratch" for lack of saving the Factory.wim (+/- 4GB) file onto a DVD or flash drive, etc.

Tom

 

Yes I found the problem as well and sent an email via the Dell website to let them know it isnt working. They have emailed out driver update alerts for the same file today so I hoped they had fixed it but it still looks broken.

 

Yeah, Im pretty happy with it. And I have not done a clean install just yet, is there a guide on how to do it?

 

Since more people are receiving their 1340s, how about some more battery info? Original thoughts were just over 2 hours, but a post a few pages ago said 3h 45m. So what are we looking at with the standard battery and difference between running with and without SLI?

 

Kennaay,

I'm sure there is somewhere. I am not entirely sure how to do it. It seems that many people here have some experience.

Could someone please post some directions for doing a clean install of Vista and/or Windows 7 (or post a link) specifically for the 1340? Also, what are the major advantages of Windows 7?

 

Jbd, yesssssssss. Someone please? Haha.

Anywho, here are my first impressions of my XPS 13. Pics will come sooner or later.

Build quality is great, except for it seems like my lappy doesn't close flush? Is this just how it was designed or is mine just crappy like that?

As far as asthetics goes, I dont like how much space there is from the screen and the phyiscal monitor, theres too much empty space in between.

The edge-to-edge is beautiful.

The rubber feets on the bottom is genius.

One thing that I don't like is that when I turn on my lappy, it has a weird clicking noise as the Multimedia touch things light up and do their thing.

The glossyness is horrible for finger prints, but I don't mind it too much.

The touchpad buttons are suckish for me, I actually love the feel of the buttons itself, but it makes a loud click, when I press it.

Keyboard is wonderful, I love it. Its tactile but its not too loud either.

The lappy did freeze and give me a blackscreen at one point, when I accidentally closed it, the first time I booted it up. In addition booting seems rather slow to me.

Slot loading drive is definitely a sexy feature, but it is a bit on the loud side.

Backlit keys are sexy sexy sexy!!!!

Touchpad gestures are a no no for me. It's a great option to have, but its too slow for me, and if i accidentally use two fingers on the touchpad, it will have like a 1sec delay for the pinch gesture...Although the scrolling is nice.

I have not used the lappy too much, especially for anything intensive so it has not been hot, or warm.

I'll do something a little more in depth as I grow more accustomed to the lappy!

 

This is a pretty good article on reformatting and removing the Dell bloatware:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=157838

I ordered my 1340 from Dell UK yesterday, ESD is 5th March:

P8600 2.4Ghz
LED screen option
4GB RAM
500GB HDD
9500m
Dell BT
Dell Wireless N

Managed to haggle the sales rep (in India) down to £899 all in (c£140 off, including EPP) not bad, if I say so myself...

 

Windows 7 is just flat out fast.
Everything seems to work (kinda like Ubuntu/Linux). Even as a beta release it seems MUCH more stable than even 64-bit Vista (which is pretty great in most cases). Microsoft's beta download opportunity ended yesterday, though. There are plenty of copies around as well as beta activation keys. You may want to check out a place like sevenforums.com for tutorials on installing. On an M1330 I can go from booting a USB thumb drive prepped with the Windows 7 installation disk, though installation and browsing the web in 15-20 minutes. Most of the drivers that used to have to be installed manually are already there. And if they aren't, the first check with Windows Update usually finds most if not all of the rest. And it's still in beta testing!!

Windows 7 installs so slick that having a USB Windows 7 installation drive in the bag could get you back to work pronto if, say, your system crashed while away on a business trip; you could reinstall Windows, download and install something like Open Office and be back writing letters in literally a half-hour.

Tom
p.s. No, I don't work for Microsoft.....LOL

 

Thanks, but that actually requires MD 3.3, which XPS13 does not come with...

 

This is great Thank you!! How much did you pay for the firewire interface and does it pay off?

 

While browsing through the Lenovo U330 owner's thread I noticed that some people reported that machine getting hot in the top left hand corner as well. I'm wondering if it's more of an issue related to 13.3" notebooks and the power they have now rather than the screen blocking the vent etc. since the Lenovo doesn't block the vent.

 

Just checking in if anyone have tried to install Windows XP yet, am struggling with finding network drivers (both ethernet & WLAN).

Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

Searching further..

 

Can't help you with that sorry..but did you check the latency issue? Did not read any test under Windows XP yet Would be highly appreciated

 

Now i have performed windows update and everything installed fine without BSODs, however i think it gets really hot. around 70 degrees on most components when plugged in and downloading stuff. that is 15 higher than my A8Js laptop

 

Firewire is not an option, it comes by default on all XPS 1340 notebooks! Look to the left of the slot-loading drive.

 

So, I got around to installing Windows 7 and I gotta say, the install was pretty painless. And having the Dell driver cd was quite handy as I loaded the NVidia drivers from there. The Nvidia SLI mode/power saver mode works just fine in Windows 7.

I haven't used it very much yet, but I will say that after bootup there's only 33 or so processes in Windows 7 compared to 60-some on my Vista install. Pretty significant if you ask me.

I created a third partition for all my data, and I'm hoping I can safely access things like source code and such from both operating systems.

Like I said, though, I haven't used the Windows 7 install much, so I don't know about any long-term issues with it on this machine.

 

Yes, Windows 7 is what most people would recommend installing. One issue though might be that in August you will have to either go back to Vista/XP OR Windows 7 beta 2 (if it is publicly available at that time). But in your particular case, since you created partitions for the OS and separately for data, it will be a very easy thing to do.

 

I am very pleased with my factory installation, however, I wish to create a number of partitions, how can I do that?

The build-in vista one sucks, and partition magic wont work on vista 64 bit.

Any free partioning tools for vista 64 bit?

Thx

 

so what would be the idea situation in terms of having windows vista and windows 7 on 1340?
3 partitions with one having vista, one having 7 and one for data?
what should be the order of installation? vista first and then 7 ? are there any threads giving specific instructions to achieve this?

sorry for too many questions was just evaluating the possibilities

 

Actually a the next windows 7 to come out is rumored to be the release candidate. The rumors are that they are shooting for a July release date. If I were anyone here, I would just make a small OS-sized partition of Vista/XP just to boot into if they ever need to. You can always mount your windows 7 partition if the beta runs out.

 

ZJ13: Yes, the battery life is definitely 3:45 with SLI turned to "save power" (turning SLI to save power), 1/3 brightness, no backlit keyboard, and wifi + bluetooth on (4 gigs ram, 2.26ghz processor, SLI, LED screen), web browsing. With SLI to performance boost, it's towards 2 hrs. Both times are correct, just with different conditions.
The battery takes a lot of effort to take out (at least mine), could be a pro or con depending on how you look at it.

Can't stress enough how nice the keyboard is (not silent, but in no way noisy, definitely quieter than mac desktop keyboard, has plenty of depth) Only con is my spacebar makes a weird squeaky noise if pressed at the wrong angle/spot, probably just mine.

Yes, you'll see your palmprint and fingerprints. (At least the exterior will be constantly wiped against the case/bag you put it in.)

For some reason tbd, mine has stopped BSODing me after updating, even though it used to for EVERY update, very counterintuitive. *cautious-celebratory-yay*

In terms of heat, with SLI switched to saving power, it only gets warm enough to make it qualify as "warm" as opposed to "room temperature" (assuming minimal graphics usage since I only used web browsing, word processing, power point, sidebar wallpaper changer, yahoo widgets + object dock)
Of course, when SLI is switched to boost performance, it'll get uncomfortably warm, very uncomfortably warm if you use graphics intensive apps like Steam: Left 4 Dead.

It has a pretty quick boot and shutdown time (for vista, that is, XD), and I haven't found a weak spot on the screen that I could press to produce ripples. Overall, strong build, crisp screen, good battery life, very good performance on everyday tasks, handles L4D with lag and heat, so much that I had to prop the back up in fear of overheating. Good luck to everyone ordering one (FYI: mine's US, came with BSOD on update issue, fixed itself last night. So far...no more BSOD...yet)

 

I create partitions before installing the OS. In your case, when it's already installed, you can use a number of commercial tools (but unfortunately i haven't heard of any that would be free).

 

My laptop finally came today! So far I am loving it. Havent done much though, just tested some things. Going to reformat and install windows 7 soon.

When i switch to power saver mode on the battery icon. It does not indicate that it switching to one video card. On the hybrid sli icon it still says boost performance. Is it because I am plugged in so it stays on boost performance?

 

Dudes i need your help!!! seriously i am panicing



When i tried installing partion magic earlier something happened. BSOD and restart, and it wont boot into windows.. it wont even return to factory image, when i try that.. I can come to a screen saying that I shall chose the OS that needs fixing.. But not OS is visible.
It then says, If no OS shows on the list click load drivers to load drivers for you hard drives. when i press that (with dell driver disk in cd-drive) it just comes op with a folder of system32,

What do i do?

If i boot on the vista cd, i can come to the install, where i must chose where to install.. i see 15 gig of recovery and 283 of un-allocated space.. it wont allow to install on either one of them! please help me!

 

hey guys, I've got a quick winodws 7 question/issue

When I boot, like, when I press the power button, the computer gets past POST, and then I get a black screen with a blinking cursor. I kill the system via the power button, restart, get past post, and the system boots just fine.

This happens every time. It also happens when I restart from windows, any ideas? The harddrive is set as the first boot device.....I'm really at a loss here...

 

EDIT:

When I am asked to chose where to install windows, I see the 15 gig recovery. If I select that one, it says. At least 14 gig of available space is requiered (the 15 gig is half full with recovery data)

I can also see the 283 GB partion, but it says it is un-allocated space on disc 0. So if i try that is says: "Windows can not find a system disc, which fullfills the criteria"..


What do I do then?